Quo vadis, organized labor?  

Getting gobsmacked by the Obama administration and Congress after all the hard work that unions did in helping elect the president and Dem members of Congress is a cause for disappointment and dismay, but also an opportunity to reassess and re-strategize.

David Moberg at In These Times writes about union leaders' meeting in Florida to do just that.

"....a little over a year after unions played a major role in electing a new Democratic president and strong congressional majority, they felt increasingly frustrated. They welcomed Labor Secretary Hilda Solis warmly, but they questioned Vice President Joe Biden sharply over issues like the need for a major new stimulus package. And they declared how “appalled” they were by Obama’s “unacceptable” support for mass firings of 93 Central Falls, R.I., high-school teachers and staff.

"Organized labor isn’t just hunkering down and hoping for better days, as it often has in the past. It can’t afford that now. “You’ve got to talk about fighting on,” says AFSCME (public employees) organizing director Jim Schmitz. “It’s an existential issue for the labor movement.”

"Unions will be taking their campaign into communities—as [AFL-CIO President Richard ]Trumka did in joining a rally in Evansville, Ind., against a Whirlpool plant closing just before the meeting, and as the AFL-CIO did with local Orlando allies in holding a community forum. The gathering of a couple hundred in the Painters union hall featured workers dealing with unemployment, a student deep in debt with few job prospects, overloaded social service providers, and an electrical contractor facing depressed consumer demand and a credit crunch for small businesses.

“ 'The clear solution is to change the system,” Trumka told the rally. “We can do it, but only if we do it together as a community.” The AFL-CIO jobs program is itself less a plan to change the system than a plan to save the system—and workers with it. 

"The proposed new stimulus includes:

• extended aid to the unemployed (approved now through the end of the year)

• renewed aid for state and local governments (there’s a $178 billion shortfall this year for states alone)

• infrastructure projects (a start on roughly $2.3 trillion in deferred maintenance, as well as new investment in high-speed rail and other needs)

• public-service jobs in high-unemployment areas, and

• redirection of the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program, or bank bailout) balance to lending to small- and medium-sized businesses.

"Trumka dismisses deficit hawks, who forget that most of the current deficit stems from Bush tax cuts, two wars and a deep recession resulting from policies of financial market deregulation. 'The U.S. does not have a short-term deficit problem,' Trumka argues. 'It has a short-term jobs problem. And the longer we wait [to create jobs], the greater the long-term debt and deficit problems become.'

"New jobs—generating new income and taxes—will repay part of the stimulus cost. But Trumka told the rally, “It’s time for Wall Street to pay for the 11 million jobs we’re short since the awful financial crisis they gave us began.” Wall Street can pay for the crisis by reimbursing the government for all TARP costs, by paying higher taxes on bonuses and by requiring hedge fund operators to pay normal income-tax rates (not lower capital gains tax rates) on all their income.

"Most important, says AFL-CIO policy director Damon Silvers, the government should impose a very small—three to five one-hundredths of a percent—tax on all financial transactions, which could generate $400 billion a year. But, he says, “most important from our point of view, it shifts financial markets from speculation to investment.”

"The AFL-CIO and its allies are pushing for tough-minded re-regulation of the financial sector, including an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency. And it wants regulation of the “shadow capital markets” (like hedge funds), a strong regulator responsible for systemic risk with powers to take over failing banks, restoration of fairness in the housing market and prohibitions against banks operating their own proprietary trading (like having a hedge fund).

"The AFL-CIO is also attempting to broaden the definition of the labor movement. It is seeking closer relationships with groups of workers who are organizing themselves—day laborers, independent contractors, domestic workers, cab drivers, farmworkers, freelance professionals, worker center organizers and many others—who may not be able or willing to form a union. And they are relying more on groups like Working America, Jobs with Justice, American Rights at Work and Interfaith Worker Justice to expand the fight for workers’ rights.

"Ultimately, incoming AFL-CIO organizing director Elizabeth Bunn says, 'History taught us organizing does not follow the law. The law follows organizing. We must be about organizing.' But until there is a change in the laws and regulations, as well as the intense anti-union ideology and behavior of American managers, every year will be a tough, existential year for organized labor."